The Obama "Movement"

Tuesday night, my family and I attended a get-together in Highland Village hastily arranged by local Barack Obama supporters. I think you could have knocked me over with a feather; I was so shocked at the turnout. After being active in the Democratic Party for a couple of years now, I’m somewhat used to knowing most of the people in the room as “the usual suspects”. More and more lately, and especially the other night, it just isn’t so. Out of about 50 people in attendance, I knew 2 people there, other than my family. Although attendance at Democratic events has been growing steadily over the past couple of years, it would have been damn hard to get that many of our regulars to turn out like that.

There were young, very young, and old. There were white, black, and Asian. There were men and women. There were Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and Libertarians – all there because something in Obama’s message struck a chord with them so much that they would get out on a Tuesday night to have dinner and drinks with a bunch of strangers with very little notice.

These are by and large, people who are enthused about becoming active, and who are looking for ways to help. They are people who self-organized. This wasn’t an effort of the local party or the Obama campaign. In fact, the Obama campaign representatives who showed up were impressed that the ground game they were charged with organizing had already begun to organize itself.

As I lay in bed that night, replaying my conversations with these voters and my discussions with my wife about what we had witnessed, my thoughts began to solidly congeal around the notion that Obama’s momentum is more about a movement than a campaign. Let me begin my explanation by stating what I believe those words, “campaign” and “movement” to mean:

A campaign is where a person or a group decides what they think would be good to do. They then do their best to convince a constituency that their idea or candidate is the best idea or candidate, given the real or perceived alternatives.

A movement is where an idea has already taken hold of a constituency, but a lack of leadership or willpower or courage has kept that idea suppressed. When critical mass of vocal support for such an idea is perceived, a chain reaction begins, and people stand up to be counted.

Obama’s candidacy is being pushed by a movement. Yes, of course he has a campaign to do all of the typical machinations that are required. But the enthusiasm is coming from the movement.

In order to understand the movement, I think you need to understand what it’s not: It’s not about Barack Obama, and what he can do for us. Look at his campaign logo. Look at his signs. Often, his name is not even on them. Think of the words “Hope” or “Change” and it is Obama, his campaign, and our movement that comes to mind. It is also not so much about policy, or you would see the same type of enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton, who has very similar policies, with what many argue are “more specifics”.

Of course I understand that saying “It’s a movement” is pretty meaningless without saying what the ideas are. And when I speak of ideas, I’m talking more about guiding principles here, not policies. What I mean is that I think Obama is communicating, and the people are hearing, a fundamental shift from conventional politics: (And note: this is not a comparison of Clinton and Obama, per-se)